The lawsuits were filed yesterday in London, Mark Lewis,
who’s representing alleged victims including former England
soccer manager Sven-Goran Eriksson and actor Shobna Gulati, said
in an e-mail. The cases are the first against a publisher other
than News Corp.’s U.K. unit, where the News of the World tabloid
was closed last year by Chairman Rupert Murdoch.

Piers Morgan, who edited the Daily Mirror between 1995 and
2004 and now hosts CNN’s “Tonight” program, told an ethics
inquiry triggered by the News Corp. scandal that phone hacking
didn’t take place at the newspaper while he was there. A former
Daily Mirror reporter later testified to the same inquiry that
hacking took place on a daily basis among the newspaper’s show-
business reporters.

Trinity Mirror is being pulled into the litigation as New
York-based News Corp. seeks to resolve more than 150 civil
lawsuits by victims, who are preparing for the first group
trial, scheduled for June 11. News Corp. has paid more than $315
million in legal fees, civil settlements with an earlier group
of victims, and the cost of shutting the News of the World.

Trinity Mirror spokesman Rich Ellis said the company wasn’t
aware of the lawsuits. The company said in a statement that its
journalists work within the criminal law and the Press
Complaints Commission code of conduct.

Shuttered Newspaper

Trinity Mirror dropped as much as 13 percent to 62.25 pence
in London trading today and was down 9.8 percent as of 11:43
a.m. The stock gained 49 percent this year through yesterday.

Lewis has represented some of News Corp.’s highest-profile
victims, including the family of murdered school girl Milly
Dowler, whose phone messages were hacked to get stories when she
was missing in 2002. Murdoch closed the 168-year-old News of the
World after it was reported in July 2011 that Dowler’s messages
were intercepted, and prosecutors allege the title targeted at
least 600 people.

James Hipwell, the Daily Mirror’s former “City Slicker”
columnist who went to jail for using market manipulation, told
the ethics inquiry in December that hacking took place when
Morgan was editor. Heather Mills, the former wife of ex-Beatle
Paul McCartney, also told the inquiry the title may have hacked
her phone.

Morgan worked more than a year at News Corp.’s News of the
World tabloid, where the phone-hacking scandal began, and five
years at the company’s Sun newspaper.

News Corp.’s hacking scandal triggered a tabloid bribery
investigation by police, who arrested dozens of journalists for
paying public officials for stories. Trinity Mirror was also
drawn into that investigation in July when one current and one
former journalist were arrested.